My rate

of update

has a very

tragic fate.

Orochimaru chased after the shadow clone of the Third for a while, until he realised that it was just a shadow clone. He chucked a kunai at its back, only for it to replace itself with a log. He skidded to a stop to survey the battlefield, and found battle everywhere, but no Hokage.

Suddenly he felt a sword pierce through his throat. It sliced right from behind, straight through his spine-

"Kai!" Orochimaru came back to his senses, more enraged than he had thought possible. He spotted the Third standing on a rooftop behind him, hands still raised in their seals. He gave chase.

Then he realised it was another shadow clone. And the cycle went on.

After a while, he realized that he was being extremely stupid with his approach to the entire debacle that his invasion had become. Wasn't he supposed to make a barrier to trap his sensei before everything else? And why wasn't he making clones of his own to find his target?

He did just that, and while his constructs searched his vicinity, he took a moment to see what was wrong with him, because obviously he wasn't naturally retarded.

He came across the problem; a small clot of chakra was blocking his jugular artery and his brain was asphyxiating.

"Seriously?!" he growled. "That is sooo contrived!"

Of all the rotten luck he had to have, he just HAD to be crippled in the start of everything by something that barely made any sense!

He dissipated the extra-stubborn chakra with a burst of his own, and a cloud of maroon escaped from his mouth. He fell down coughing, clutching his neck.

With a sudden increase in clarity, he realised that he had not been able to do pretty much anything that day. But he could not leave without accomplishing at least something.

"Sasuke..." He headed off back towards the arena. He'd intended for the Uchiha to mature his drive for power for a while to make his bond with Orochimaru stronger when the time came, but he could do without.

Battles cannot last forever, fortunately.

Konoha suffered, but it did not suffer much. Some structural damage, the loss of some forces, and an irreparable loss of reputation for almost getting overwhelmed in the middle of an exam, of all things, but nothing much more than that.

Civilians were safe, families were reunited with one another, and the will of fire ran strong once more.

And that was not the end of it.

Orochimaru had to run. His forces had been exposed, and now Konoha was wary. It would be a long time before that snake reared its head up again, and in the meantime, the village in the leaves could grow safely. But while the village was doing exactly that...

"Are you sure we can't seal him off into one of our own people, Sir?" A nameless ninja asked, standing by the Hokage at the edge of the stadium.

"The idea tempted me, but It would be a lot more trouble than it's worth. We'd have to find another newborn child to imprison it in, and well, we all know how newborn jinchuriki tend to turn out."

Naruto was a VERY lucky exception to that rule.

The Hokage knew that the answer would not satisfy, and truth be told he really wanted to do just what had been suggested. But-

"Ughhhh... Gaara, anytime now! Wakey wakey, you dumb brat!"

-the One-tailed beast lying on the ground in front of them, prone and unmoving, was really a wildcard at that stage. Heck, the Third didn't even know if he could be sealed into anything at all, considering that it was sealed just fine into someone else a few hours ago.

"I mean, look at him, Sir. He's totally out of whatever energy empowered him. And he can't go back into his old seal at all."

"Which doesn't make sense. Bijuu have a near unlimited reservoir of chakra at their disposal. So where has that energy all gone?"

The Hokage turned away from the demon in front of him and surveyed the rest of the bruised and battered arena. He tried to, at least. His eyes inevitably found their way to two giant animals lying near each other, feebly lifting their limbs for an attempted attack before falling back in exhaustion. They were so tired that they couldn't even fully mouth the insults the wanted to say.

"Where's Jiraiya?" The Gokage asked no one in particular.

"He's transfusing his Toad with some chakra right now, trying to get him out of here."

"Heh," the old man chuckled. "To think that the summons are so tired that they can't even muster the energy to go back."

"Um, on a similar vein, Lord Hokage, what are we going to do with the snake?"

"I sent for Anko Mitarashi to deal with that particular problem. There are some things I'd like that snake to clarify for our sakes, and I think she can get through to him."

"Hmm. I can't seem to decide whom I'd like to run from more."

"I can understand that," the Hokage let out absent mindedly. "Send for Kakashi, Yamato," he asked the now named shinobi.

"You called, Lord Hokage?" Kakashi replied, conveniently there.

"I think you're late for your report. Not that I expected otherwise, but I'd like to have it, all the same," The hokage spoke in a tone that would have made a more moral man die of shame, but Kakashi already had his face hidden.

Shame did not come so easily to him.

"I managed to save Naruto and Sasuke, and the four shinobi that they were battling have been subdued. I left some of my dogs and shadow clones to guard them, and-" Kakashi took a few seconds to yawn, "-everyone you imprisoned in the ground is still in the ground."

With but a few handseals from the man responsible, the ground under them all shuddered and a mass of people that were not there suddenly were, still sleeping soundly.

"Take me to your students," Kakashi was ordered.

They jumped across the arena and went over the walls, and then they dashed on to the hospital. Both of the students the two ninja sought were there, each unconscious and sporting a few broken bones apiece.

Once they got there and Sarutobi had them under his gaze, he finally relaxed. "I was sure that Orochimaru would get to at least one of these children before the day had ended. That being said-"

Suddenly, Sasuke's eyes opened wide and he muttered a single sentence, "Ssuck on it, Ssensei." He poofed into nothingness.

Back inside the sewer that was now dry, two boys and a bijuu sat in silence. The humans had been glaring at each other for an indeterminable period of time, and the demon was lying down hoping that this period of time remained indeterminable, just happy that the annoying brats had something else to annoy.

All good things come to an end, however.

"Ya know, there's really no point to all this. I mean, you just cried yourself to sleep on my shoulder just a while back, you might as well drop the whole I'm-so-dangerous act," Naruto deadpanned.

Gaara snarled, blushing. He tried to say something, but stumbled over his words.

Naruto just sighed, rubbing his forehead. And he'd thought he was bad with people.

"Can we just skip to the point where I say that we need to find your desert again and you just say yes?" Naruto droned.

"No," Gaara droned back.

"Aww Come ON! You won't even tell me why!" Naruto cried out, rising up and beginning to pace around. After Gaara's continued silence, the pacing became stomping and finally he came to a stop in front of the other boy.

He loomed over him menacingly, his eyes barely a foot from Gaara's, and contemplated how to break him.

Even the Kyuubi deigned to look over, hopeful that he would say something intelligent and meaningful.

"You ever taste ramen before?" Naruto asked, a cheerful grin magically appearing on his face.

The demon shut its eyes once more, feeling stupid for even hoping.

Confused, Gaara just shook his head.

Naruto fell back on his rump, sighing. "Why does no-one I'm stuck with ever like the things I like?" He complained, looking back at the demon sourly. "I mean, even hanging out with Sasuke is better than this. At least he has the decency to be interested..." He trailed off, noticing no-one was listening to him.

"At least I always knew he was interested, though he's such an epic bastard his face never even twitched to show it. How did I know, anyways?" he asked aloud.

"Because he insulted you about everything sooner or later?" The demon quipped.

"I guess so- Oh. You think you're reeeal funny, don't ya?" The fox's face was turned away, conveniently hiding its smug grin.

"Well, I always managed to insult him back, so there," Naruto stuck his tongue out, for good measure.

His blood froze upon hearing a chuckle sound out from where he knew the other intruder of his mind was sitting. He turned around to see an absent minded smile on the otherwise psychotic kid.

Seeing Naruto's surprised face probably reminded him that he was supposed to be the bad guy there, and he redonned his scowl. The proverbial blood was in the water though, and Naruto grinned like a shark.

"Wow, you actually DO have a funny bone in your scrawny body!" he laughed, sitting down in front of the now somewhat disturbed looking Sand nin. He leaned forward once again, but this time that wasn't all he did.

"Poke," Naruto said, doing so as well. Gaara tried to swat away the hand, but it was relentless. IT poked him in every place imaginable, and he squirmed and swatted at it with increasing annoyance until he could bear it no longer and he stood up, shoving his aggressor away.

"Nyah nyah!" Naruto taunted him, slapping the side of his face and running off to one side, vanishing into the nearby darkness of the unlit sewer tunnels. With a roar of impotent rage, Gaara followed, running like a madman.

The demon, left behind, was actually quite impressed. Then after a moment of thought, it decided that it all wasn't really that impressive. After all, it took a lot of energy to NOT chase after Naruto with the intent to kill. With a burst of chakra sent to tag along with its jinchuriki, The Kyuubi closed its giant eyes.

Gaara drifted through the endless seeming corridors of wherever he was. The occasional chuckle echoed through a particular exit now and then, letting Gaara have a place to keep aiming towards. He wanted nothing more than to crush the other kid so thoroughly his blood would flow like a river, and the fact that he couldn't do so burned him to his core.

But he followed. It was something, at least.

Soon, he came upon a few piles of sand strewn in front of him. He stared, and walked on.

The sand grew in quantity, and hearing those infernal bouts of mocking laughter once more from in front of him, Gaara walked on.

In time, but at what time he could not tell, he found himself in a vast desert. A desert that while hot and unforgiving in normal times, was serene and cool in the light of dusk.

He stepped on, unsure of what to make of it. Nothing sullied his mind; he was still his own self. He stopped and looked around at the endless expanses, doing nothing.

"Wow."

Gaara turned around and saw he who he was chasing for that entire time, walking around like the place was his own.

Gaara dashed towards him, arms raised to strangle, but in a parody of what happened before, he fell on his face again. He felt a hand helping him up and he took it, then decided to support himself on it for a little while longer.

"I'm jealous, Gaara. All I have in my head is a bunch of sewers. To think you've got all... This, buried right over here," Naruto joked, tapping Gaara's temple once.

"It burns, at other times," Gaara said listlessly, staring into the distance. "Burns, and... Hates."

Gaara could feel the arm around him tightening. Uncomfortable all of a sudden, he shrugged it away and stood on his lonesome.

"Kyuubi says we need to find your demon, Gaara. If we don't, you'll never be able to go back to the outside."

Sighing, Gaara sat down on the sand. Sighing further, he dropped his back onto the ground, lying down and staring into the violet sky.

"I don't want to go outside. I don't want to go back anywhere. Everything is just... perfect." Tears threatened to break out at a moments notice.

"Aww, that's not the Gaara I know. I thought you'd be raring to go and get some blood, you know? Killing? Something you love?"

That sentence tugged the restrained tears out, and soon Gaara was bawling like a child. In a little moment, Naruto realized that Gaara still was a child, and a very very sad one at that.

In a broken voice that kept getting worse, Gaara said many things. Of how he could never feel the love of another, how he was held away from the world by a barrier of hatred and a barrier of sand, how all he thought he knew was a lie in the dusk of his childhood and he was just a weapon, nothing more... He could be nothing more!

He had to kill! He had no other reason to exist! But what an existence. To dance around madness when blood was scarce, when he could not exercise his desire to kill...

When he slept, he couldn't sleep. When he stayed awake for days upon days and then inevitably collapsed, and the demon would fight him for control, it tore him apart. And then he woke up again and felt more dead then alive.

And he was finally free, finally at peace, and he didn't want it to end, but he didn't want to be alone, and he wanted to be alone, and the only person around was Naruto and he was... He was so like him and so much happier... Why was he happy when he himself suffered so much in every single moment of his life? Why?

"Because, Gaara..." Naruto trailed off, lightly drumming his fingers on Gaara's bony chest, which still hiccuped from all the blubbering. "All it takes to be happy is a smile... Wait, that didn't sound right."

Gaara stared back, not comprehending.

"Ugh, I'm so bad at words and stuff! Sorry Gaara," he muttered, scratching the back of his head. Then a moment later he added, "Shut up, furball."

He took a while to think, then he began again, talking slowly and mincing his words more often than not.

"I was, like, 10 years old when I had to set up my own apartment and everything. I really didn't want to leave Grampa Hokage's house, and when I left, I kinda said a lot of bad things to him. And when I was all set up, It was really lonely."

Gaara was hiccuping less frequently, listening to Naruto raptly from where he lay, and Naruto kept up his mindless drumming from where he sat next to Gaara's chest.

"Anyways, I avoided seeing him for a long time, hid out in my house for a while, but he came back a couple of days later with a bowl of Ramen. And boy, was it the best Ramen I ever ate! But that's not the point." He coughed a little, self conscious. "The point is, he did come back. And even though I really didn't want to see him then... I really did want to see him then."

He gave an impish smile as he almost threw Gaara's words back at his still bemused face.

"I saw you smiling earlier, Gaara, and smiles only come when someone is happy. Sometimes seeing someone else smile can make you happy too." Naruto gave off a grin as bright as the sun. "And sometimes you may not want to smile but still want to feel happy. All you have to do, Gaara, is give people a chance. They come around, trust me. I have so many friends now, and once I thought I would never have any."

"But... But they're afraid of me, all of them."

"Trust me Gaara. All you need to do to get them to be your friends is to smile more often. Ya know, show them that you won't just kill them if they come nearer towards you."

"Is that why you're so happy? Friends?"

"Yep."

They sat still for a while, Gaara now peaceful, lounging in catharsis, and Naruto reminiscing about old Hokages and Ramen bowls.

"At least you have a brother and a sister. I don't have a family," Naruto spoke out after licking his parched lips.

"I do," Gaara acquiesced. In the silence that followed, Gaara had the strangest feeling. It was as if words were exploding on his tongue, and all he had to do was open his mouth to let them run away.

"You know why Kankuro wears face paint?" Gaara blurted.

With those floodgates open, they talked of many things. The way they went around their lives, although Gaara really had one thing to say about that-

"I once delayed the lower part of the sand coffin, and the Grass Ninja's heart popped out of his ribs."

"Unhuh," Naruto grimaced.

"It was still beating."

"..."

"It looked so funny."

-and killing wasn't that good a conversation keeper.

The way the people around them were, which they both had a wealth of information for. The way their village looked and felt...

"It's a lot like this, actually," Gaara said, sitting up and digging his hands through the sand. "A lot more windy and a lot more hot..."

He looked out into the horizon. He stood up and tried to look even further, but then dropped back down.

"I never really looked at it, but I think it would be... beautiful."

The tranquility was broken by a loud roar, the explosion of a sun above and the restarting of the winds they had seen before, all coming back at once.

"GAARA!" A guttural voice barked out, and before Naruto knew it, he was back in his own sewers, facing the cage once more.

He blinked about aimlessly for a while. He got the feeling that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong, but he couldn't do anything about it and it was making him frantic. "Gaara?" He called out. "Are you..."

"It seems his own demon finally woke up," The fox said, opening its eyes and giving out a wide, fang showing yawn.

"Damn. That thing sure didn't sound happy."

"The Ichibi never really was happy. Had the power of the very earth in that tail, and still whined about getting the shortest stick."

Naruto groaned in annoyance for an entirely different reason. "Ugh! To think that he was finally not totally whacked in the head."

He collapsed onto the floor and sat cross-leggedy, harrumphing. His eyes did not feel the need to adjust to the dimness of his own home away from home, and he glared a hole into the featureless floor. On a whim, he tried to imagine a forest all around him with the sunlight seeping through the leaves, but nothing changed. "Darn," he muttered.

"Don't take this the wrong way, kid. I still think you're the worst thing I ever set my eyes on, but... I didn't think you could have done that."

"Done what?" Naruto asked, dusting off his sleeve and looking at his nails, then passing a hand backwards through his hair.

After a little growl and a glare, the Kyuubi sighed. "Making that other brat open up."

Naruto laughed. "Hey, I'm just awesome with people. Deal with it."

"No wonder," the fox muttered, flicking its tail, which substituted as much as it could for an eye roll when the Kyuubi's eyes were closed.

"Now I just need to go wake up and see what's going on outside."

The kyuubi shrugged.

In a matter of seconds, Naruto vanished into wisps of chakra.

Confound these ponies.

X.x